Nicholas Stuart is a columnist with the Canberra Times.
Nick Stuart has written three books,
Kevin Rudd: An Unauthorised Political Biography;
What Goes Up: Behind the 2007 Election; and
Rudd's Way: November 2007 - June 2010.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

JUST WHEN DID THE CAMPAIGN FALL APART?

There's no doubt in my mind when Rudd lost the campaign.

Labor was gone, we knew that. But then came what for me will be the defining image of this election battle - Kevin Rudd's brush with Barry O'Farrell. And when a NSW Premier wins a defence debate you know your re-election bid's in difficulty.

Andrew Meares captures the confrontation.

This piece, for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's blog The Strategist considers the way Defence issues have been used for partisan political advantage during the campaign . . .

POLICY, WHAT POLICY?

An ear-piercing alarm should ring
the moment a politician pretends national security is too important for party
politicking. You know they’re lying. That’s because within seconds they’ll set
about violating their own injunction. Thin, grasping, avaricious fingers reach
out from beneath the purity of the policy wrapping. They’re clutching around for
any scrap of partisan political advantage they can use to belabour their
opponents.

Before the campaign began Kevin
Rudd flew to Afghanistan to thank the troops. That was terrific and
appropriate. Nor should Tony Abbott be prevented from demonstrating his own
personal battle-fitness by doing push-ups with the troops. These are the sorts
of anodyne images you expect during election campaigns.

Last week was different. For the
first three weeks of the election campaign a deafening silence had enveloped
strategic issues. But then, quite suddenly, the military was all anyone wanted
to talk about. A deliberate, systematic attempt was being made to use national
security for partisan political advantage.

The issues laid on the table –
the place to site Fleet Base East and the proportion of GDP to be devoted to
defence – are important and need to be addressed. There’s nothing wrong,
either, with politicians loudly asserting their points-of-view. In fact, it's
probably very good if they disagree because the result should be better policy.
In this case, however, there was no desire to improve strategic outcomes. They
were irrelevant. Defence was being harnessed to serve a blatant political need:
winning votes.

The campaign itself had been
going nowhere. Gradually, week by week and opinion poll by opinion poll, Labor
had been falling behind. Rudd urgently needed to land a couple of punches on
Abbott. Politically the answer was obvious. Talk about (a) the future and (b)
an area where the Prime Minister’s credibility trumped that of the Opposition
Leader. An announcement that the Fleet Base would move north served his needs
brilliantly.

The sandstone facade of the Lowy
Institute added gravitas and credibility to the move, then it was off down to
the Domain for the pictures of the PM with Garden Island in the background. But
that's where it all began falling apart.

Premier Barry O'Farrell heard
what Rudd was doing. In a moment of brilliance he decided to ambush the press
conference. The television cameras were still rolling when the NSW leader
walked past, delivering a supposedly off-the-cuff comment. “A phone call would
have been nice, Kevin," he exclaimed, before quickly walking off and
leaving the PM with his mouth gaping open.

By now the strategists had also
began reacting – and none were positive. It's difficult to disagree with a
Prime Minister when he's standing in front of you, but even at Lowy the chorus
of support had been muted. Rudd's team had failed to ensure a couple of experts
had been fully briefed beforehand, so they could chorus their support. There
were no third-party endorsements and instead the critics jumped onto the
airwaves to begin enumerating the problems.

That night the image of the
confrontation with O’Farrell dominated the reporting. Rudd's only supporter was
someone from the cruise-liner industry talking about the need to berth tourist
ships in the Navy yards. Instead of emphasising his national security
credentials, the move had backfired.

It's dangerous to suggest there's
such a thing as political “momentum". Nevertheless, this was the moment
Labor’s campaign came to a crashing halt. The campaign narrative had changed.
The PM had been discomfited dealing with subject matter that should have been
his strong suit.

The irony was the announcement
left Labor flailing on the very day it had an opportunity to focus in on an
Abbott policy that exposed his vulnerability. The previous day the coalition
had laid out its budget spending commitments. The headliners were huge boosts
to health and defence; an additional $40 billion worth of outlays. Critically,
Abbott had specifically guaranteed defence spending would return to 2 percent
of GDP. This should have been Labor’s “gotcha!” moment.

Commitments like this sound
wonderful, but ASPI’s Mark Thomson quickly dissected exactly what it would
mean. A week earlier he and the Institute’s Andrew Davies had measured the
actual distance between future capability plans and current spending, so they
were ready. As they quickly demonstrated, the only problem with these grand
commitments is turning them into reality – requiring an annual spending boost
of more than five percent for a decade.

Anyone can promise to increase the
budget allocation to defence. The real question is; where will that money come
from? Particularly when it’s put alongside other, similar guarantees that the
government will return a surplus of one percent within a decade while
simultaneously managing to increase spending on health and fund an enormous new
disability care scheme. This implies an economic growth rate of 17 percent.

If you believe this can be
achieved, well, I’ve got a bridge over Sydney Harbour that I’d like to sell
you.

Carl von Clausewitz’s great revelation
was that war represents “the continuation of politics by other means”. In the
hands of Australian politicians defence is simply another arena to continue
searching for partisan advantage.

5 comments:

It was another Ruddy moment... but seriously folks the Labor campaign was over weeks ago as Kev's plethora of half-baked announcements and confused campaign style muddled across the landscape like a drunk one-legged dog. Well... "Time to Zip"

A drunk dog, yes . . . but one-legged, Charles? I'm still attempting to get my mind around that. Still perhaps you're right, because the image captures the dysfunction that's bedevilled Labor. I should have spent more time hanging around with the young Libs at the SRC!

You were far too busy enjoying your parties at college to attend such hard core 'serious' meetings with Albo, Belinda N and various odd bods. The young Libs were actually members of the Australian Liberal Students Federation enjoying various cocktail parties (how could you miss this ??)